Open Science Workshop Shines Light on FAIR Research Principles
On 20 December 2023, the SALIENT consortium member Fraunhofer IWU held an online webinar entitled “ Open Science Workshop” aiming to provide insights into the fundamentals and benefits of open data access and open research principles.
Mrs Friederike L. Kühl, COO of Etelätär Innovation, moderator of the webinar, welcomed Mr Sebastian Rink, Business Developer Engineer at Fraunhofer IWU, who shared with the participants valuable insights and information about open research.
Mr Rink started his presentation by defining open science, its principles and also its importance. He highlighted that open research can contribute to savings in access, labour and transaction costs and in news activities and results, among other benefits.
Open Access Publications
A publication is defined as “open access” when free access to information and unrestricted use of electronic resources for everyone. Additionally, an analysis was provided on green and gold open-access publications and the different types of Creative Commons (CC) licences.
Ten benefits for publishing open access can be derived from this:
Good information supply
Fair & transparent use of taxpayers’ money
Free & fast access to scholarly information
New methods, new knowledge
High visibility
Research funders’ & institutions’ policies
Collaboration & networking
Authors are free to license their works as they see fit
Good findability & long-term access
Efficient research & innovation
The webinar also included a live demo of the best practices examples of the Fhaunhover-Publica Platform of Fraunhofer- Gesellschaft, operating for over 30 years and fostering the transfer of knowledge and expertise to the industry sector and society.
Open Data
Data may be considered open when the data is accessible to all and may be freely used, re-used and redistributed by anyone. This is subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and name the author. Mr Rink referred to the advantages of open data publishing. To underline his point he presented a real best practice example, the Research Data Repository Fordatis, an institutional research data repository at the Fraunhofer Information Center for Planning and Building IRB on behalf of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.
All participants had the opportunity to pose questions and learn more about the available repositories and publication platforms.
Watch the workshop video below and learn how you can improve your research skills.